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Sub-Group I. Professional Correspondence
Series 1: Associations / Agencies
Series 2: Individuals
Sub-Group II. Professional Activities
Series 3: Public Appearances
Series 4:Controversies
Series 5:Writings
Series 6: Grant Applications, Reports
Series 7: Long-term studies
Sub-Group III. Personal Materials
Series 8: Personal Materials
Sub-Group IV. Schilder Papers
Series 9: Professional Correspondence; Official Documents
Series 10: Publication-Related Materials
Series 11:Personal Materials
Sub Group V. John O. Bender Papers
Series 12: John O. Bender Papers
I. PROFESSIONAL CORRESPONDENCE
SERIES 1: ASSOCIATIONS / AGENCIES, 1942-1968. 4 document boxes. 2 cubic
feet. Alphabetically arranged by organization, IN chronological arrangement.
This series contains professional correspondence, reports, memoranda,
abstracts of papers connected with many of the agencies and organizations
Bender was associated with on both a voluntary and paid basis.
Materials here relate to the American Psychiatric Association (1952-1967),
particularly to its Committee on Child Psychiatry (1942-1951); the American
Psychopathological Association (1944-1967), including Bender's presidency
in 1962; American Public Health Association (1956-1961), chiefly in
connection with the preparation of a publication called "Services
for Children with Emotional Disturbances;" Center for Applied Linguistics
(1966); Committee on Psychiatric Services for Children (Department of
Hospitals, N.Y.C.; 1962-1964); Community Council of Greater New York
(1958-1961); Community Mental Health Board, an offshoot of the Committee
on Psychiatric Services for Children (1963-65); the Council for Exceptional
Children (1959-61).
There are extensive materials (from 1947-1959) here on Irvington House,
a residential facility at Irvington-on-Hudson for children with rheumatic
disorders, on the medical board of which Bender served from 1947-1959
during her teaching tenure at New York University (with which Irvington
House is affiliated). Items here also deal with the League for Emotionally
Disturbed Children (1950-61) and its offshoot, the League School for
Seriously Disturbed Children (1956-66). Bender became a member of the
League's advisory board in 1953. There are materials on the Lifeline
Center for Child Development (1964-66) and Manfred Sakel Foundation
(1959-68). Professional correspondence with the New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric
Institute (1953-1958) covers courses conducted and lectures given by
Bender. There is correspondence that refers to a possible position for
her there, although this did not materialize as well as correspondence
(in 1956) regarding to a manuscript by Dr. Helen Yarnell (subject of
a folder in Box 15).
SERIES 2: INDIVIDUALS. 1936-69. 3 boxes. 1.5 cubic feet. Alphabetically
arranged. Correspondence here includes letters on projected and completed
visits by prominent persons, notifications of staff changes, and recommendations
for persons who worked under Bender. Among letters of interest are an
exchange with, and correspondence about, Ernest Harms. A separately
alphabetized folder (maintained by Bender) contains correspondence with
persons of importance. These include the following, arranged alphabetically:
Percival Bailey, Augusta Bonnare; Hyman Caplan; Mildred Creak; Madame
C. Crespin; Katrina de Hirsch; G. Heuyer; Leo Kanner; John C. Kerridge;
Henning Poulsen (her son Peter's director), along with a few written
by Peter while he was under Poulsen's direction; Fredric Wertham; and
Herman Wortis.
II. PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
SERIES 3: PUBLIC APPEARANCES, 1936-1968.
3 bxs. 1.5 cubic feet. Arrangement varies. This series contains material
on speaking engagements Bender undertook or refused; her participation
or requested participation in such events, professional conferences;
the government hearings at which she testified as an expert and radio
programs in which she participated.
SUB-SERIES 1: SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS, ACCEPTED AND COMPLETED; AND NOT
ACCEPTED, 1953-1968.
SUB-SERIES 2: GOVERNMENT HEARINGS, CONFERENCES OF NOTE, MEETINGS IN
WHICH BENDER PARTICIPATED, RADIO PROGRAMS, 1936-68.
Sub-Series 1 contains the speaking engagement which Bender classified
as accepted and completed are arranged chronologically. Speaking engagements
which she did not accept are also ordered chronologically but separated
from the rest. There are materials here regarding a projected lecture
tour in Argentina (1964-1966) that did not materialize.
Sub-Series 2 bears testimony records at government conferences and hearings.
(Although items on a hearing conducted by Estes Kefauver in 1950 on
the effects of comics on children are included in Box 12, "Comics").
Bender testified on the subject of youth and the family in 1955 at the
Sub-Committee on Youth and the Family of the Temporary Commission on
the Courts; on youth and crime, in the same year, before the Law Enforcement
Institute sponsored jointly by Senator Jacob K. Javits and Mark A. McCloskey
of the New York State Youth Commission; and on youth and delinquency,
also in 1955. In 1957, she testified on education of mentally retarded
children at the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare of the United
States Senate, and in 1959, on special education for the emotionally
disturbed at the Committee on Education and Labor at the U.S. House
of Representatives. She submitted written testimony to the Sub-Committee
to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the U.S. Senate in 1960. The
series includes programs for many conferences in which Bender is listed
as a participant from 1936-68. Finally, there are correspondence on
radio programs in which Bender participated between 1936 and 1963, with
the bulk of the material falling in the 1940s.
SERIES 4: CONTROVERSIES, 1915-1962. 1 document box. .5 cubic foot. Arranged
alphabetically, with interior chronological arrangement.
SUB-SERIES 1: THE FATHER DIVINE CONTROVERSY, 1935-1944
SUB-SERIES 2: THE BENDER-GESTALT CONTROVERSY, 1945-1962 The controversies
here consist of documents concerning professional issues in which Bender
became embroiled.
Sub-Series 1 relates to an article Bender published in The Journal of
Nervous and Mental Diseases. Although the article is not named in any
of the related correspondence which dates from 1935, the only article
published by Bender in that journal near that time is "Psychiatric
Mechanisms in Child Murderers," published in volume 80 of the journal
in 1934, so that correspondence in the following year would seem to
be on target. The correspondence is from researchers interested in Bender's
findings, and from followers of Father Divine, interested in defending
him and his followers from Bender's allegations. There are also clippings
from issues of Divine's magazine, The New Day, ranging from 1940-1944.
Sub-Series 2, the Bender-Gestalt Dispute, records Bender's successful
fight against infringement of her copyright for the Bender Visual Motor
Gestalt Test (popularly known as the Bender-Gestalt Test) which she
developed and reported in 1938. The bulk of records fall in 1960-1962,
when Bender engaged attorneys Hutt and Gerald J. Briskin. In letters
on the subject dated November 9, 1960, Bender gives some of the most
salient history on the matter, alluding to difficulties with Hutt that
went back to 1945. Copies of that early correspondence are included
in the file. The case was resolved on June 30, 1962, with the signing
of a stipulation that the book would carry statements essentially dictated
by Bender's attorneys.
SERIES 5: WRITINGS, 1928-1966. 2 document boxes. 1 cubic foot. arrangement
varies.
The writings series contains materials on Bender's published/unpublished
writings (sometimes written in collaboration with others) and are arranged
alphabetically, by title. These materials, when compared with the bibliography
she prepared (located in Box 15), represent only a small fraction of
her total written output. (They also do not include the voluminous materials,
and a good deal of her correspondence relating to them, are organized
in boxes 19-22). In addition to the copies of Bender's writings, series
5 includes her correspondence and reviews concerning her own publications,
arranged chronologically, and a folder of correspondence dating from
1958-1961 concerning the founding of the Journal of the American Academy
of Child Psychiatry.
SERIES 6: GRANT APPLICATIONS; REPORTS, 1943-1956. 1 document box. 5
cu. ft. Arranged alphabetically.
Series 6 has applications, correspondence, and reports connected with
various grants made to Bender, and/or to institutions with which she
was affiliated, between 1943 and 1956. The Fieke Foundation paid small
amounts to the Children's Psychiatric Fund to cover the salary of a
reading tutor at New York University from 1948 to 1951. The Ford Foundation
rejected, in 1956, a proposal submitted by Bender in 1955. The National
Institutes of Health (NIH) funded a study of childhood schizophrenia
from 1951 through 1952, and corresponded occasionally about the project
through 1955. In 1956, NIH rejected another application for a research
grant. The New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital provided
some support for research on dementia precox between 1943 and 1948,
in connection with the Scottish Rite Committee on Research in Demential
Precox. The letters concerning this research includes letters about
Dr. Ewart Hines, a young colleague associated with this project who
died suddenly in 1947.
SERIES 7: LONG-TERM STUDIES, 1929-1960. 3 document boxes. 1.5 cubic
feet.
SUB SERIES 1: PHIPPS-MARYLAND STUDY, 1929-1956.
SUB-SERIES 2: COMICS, 1941-1960.
SUB-SERIES 3: TELEVISION AND MOVIES, 1940-1955.
SUB-SERIES 4: ART AND THERAPY, 1935-1950.
SUB-SUBSERIES A: ART THERAPY, MUSEUM AND WARD WORK, 1936-1950.
SUB-SUBSERIES B: MUSIC THERAPY, 1936-1946
SUB-SUBSERIES C: PUPPET SCRAPBOOK, 1935
Sub-Series 1 consists of a longitudinal study of ninety schizophrenic
women. The original study was conducted in 1929-1930 at the Henry Phipps
Psychiatric Clinic of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Springfield
State Hospital, when Bender was a research assistant in schizophrenia
there. The subjects of the study were women who had initially been evaluated
in 1913. In 1955-156, Bender restudied the group in collaboration with
Irene L. Hitchman. Their findings were presented at the meeting of the
Society of Biological Psychiatry in Chicago, on 28 April 1956, and were
published as "A Longitudinal Study of Ninety Schizophrenic Women"
in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease in the same year (included
in Box 9).
Sub-Series 2 is a collection of materials that Bender was interested
in for many years: comics, and their effect on children. She presented
a paper on this subject in 1941 and thereafter was in touch with, and
a paid advisor to, important companies in the comics industries. She
repeatedly advised, sometimes in testimony before governmental bodies
and often in print and in live broadcasts, that comics alone could not
harm a healthy psyche, and that some of the fantasies they embodied
were helpful to children. (Materials relating to her testimony before
a senate committee headed by Estes Kefauver in 1950 are included in
the folder for that year). The influence of comics on children, particularly
as it impinged on the study of children and violence, was of great interest
to Bender, who did not, however, advocate the depiction of violence
or perversion. Bender's correspondence on comics ranges from 1941-1960
and is arranged chronologically; clippings on comics that are distinct
from this correspondence range from 1949-54, and are filed separately.
Sub-Series 3 is about TV and the movies and is closely related to Sub-Series
2, since in this case, also, Bender was primarily interested in the
effect of depictions of violence on children. The materials in this
Sub-Series include two clippings files, one on delinquency and one on
drug use, ranging from 1940 to 1955, and a folder of offprints and reports
dating between 1941 and 1960 on the effect of TV and movies on the youth.
Sub-Series 4 testifies to Bender's strong interest in the use of art
as therapy. From 1936 to 1950, she studied and wrote about the significance
of children's graphic art work. She was connected to many programs and
exhibits in difference museums concerning the art work of mentally disturbed
children. A letter from Margaret Mead, dated 2 February 1945, on the
letterhead of the Museum of Natural History, is included in the file.
Materials on the use of music as therapy, dating from 1935 through 1946,
are also included in this series. Perhaps most prominently, Bender promoted
the use of puppet shows in the children's ward at Bellevue in the 30's,
employing particularly an emigre named Adolph Woltmann. Bender maintained
a (now dismantled) scrapbook of clippings, photographs, and letters
about puppets. Letters contained in this file, in Box 15, and in Box
23, attest to the fact that Woltmann became a close friend. In a touching
holograph letter to Bender dated 21 December 1935, Woltmann, who apparently
had performed in fairs in Europe, tells Bender that she "detected
and discovered my immortal soul." Letters he sent her in the 40's
from Europe, after visiting her deceased husband's family as her agent,
attest to the lasting bond between the two.
SUB-GROUP III. PERSONAL MATERIALS
SERIES 8: PERSONAL MATERIALS, 1926-1967. 3 document boxes. 1.5 cubic
feet. Arrangement varies. Bender's personal materials vary considerably,
and leave many gaps.
The materials include several undated bibliographies of her writings,
several cvs, an undergraduate essay by her son, Peter, concerning his
background (and throwing light on his mother), and a revealing autobiographical
sketch, dated 1964, and marked in pencil "not to be published in
my life time without my permission."
Also extant are official documents including medical licenses dating
back to the forties, memos and correspondence relating to Bender's changing
positions in the fifties, and one or two certificates related to her
job status in the late 60's. There is a photograph of her second husband,
Henry Parkes, barely mentioned in the collection, but identified in
her obituary as a former professor of history at N.Y. University.
Bender retained some family letters, including correspondence with her
mother dating from the 60's when Mrs. Bender was a resident in the Longwood
Manor Sanitorium; with her brothers John and Karl in the 50's and 60's;
with her children, at various dates; and with various school officials
concerning her children's schooling. This correspondence indicates that,
like her, all of Bender's children were dyslexic. She also retained
an early effort at creativity by Peter as well as an advanced paper,
"A New Statistical Method for Predicting Long Term Tropospherif
Loss," by her son Michael. Finally, she retained a few cards celebrating
her re-marriage. The materials relating to each of these individuals
of events are arranged separately, with the internal chronological arrangement
when appropriate.
Three colleagues, Joseph Montague, Merrill Moore, and Helen Yarnell,
whose deaths apparently had great importance to Bender are the subject
of a separate folder containing materials ranging from 1940 to 1961.
Bender also collected clippings relating to some of her colleagues,
particularly, in 1966 and 1967, to Elliott Shapiro, the embattled principal
of a public school in Harlem (see Series 2 for related correspondence).
Bender did not systematically collect materials concerning her own honors
and awards, but there is some information on a few that she received
with some clippings between 1949-60.
IV. SCHILDER PAPERS
SERIES 9: NOTEBOOKS, PROFESSIONAL CORRESPONDENCE; PROFESSIONAL RECORDS;
CASE HISTORIES, CLIPPINGS, 1886-1940. 2 document boxes. 1 cubic foot.
Arranged chronologically within categories.
SERIES 9 contains the professional correspondence and official documents
of Paul Schilder (1886-1940), Bender's first husband. Much of this is
early material, predating her acquaintance with Schilder which commenced,
according to her autobiography, in 1930. There are three handwritten
notebooks in German, the first of which is dated 1926, and papers contained
in these notebooks have been removed, unfolded, and placed in folders.
Typed and handwritten correspondence and memos in both German and English,
dating from 1928 through 1940 and relating to various professional positions,
are grouped chronologically. Letters of a professional nature, acknowledging
referrals, for example, are grouped chronologically and range from 1932
to 1941, while a separate folder contains letters in French, German
and Spanish, spanning the years 1926 through 1940; letters to private
patients over the years 1933 to 1940, also arranged chronologically,
are grouped together. Case histories of some patients, some of which
are dated, are arranged in the order the last name or initial of the
patient.
Schilder, and then Bender, retained clipping concerning two controversies
of the 30s, Schilder's own clashed with Psychoanalytic Society (1933-1944),
and the public clashes that raged between Dr. M.S. Gregory, chief of
the psychiatric hospital at Bellevue, and Dr. S.S. Goldwater, Commissioner
of Hospitals, in 1934 and 1935.
SERIES 10: PUBLICATIONS-RELATED MATERIALS, 1913-1919. 4 boxes, 2 cubic
feet
SUB-SERIES 1: REVIEWS, CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, 1924-1955
SUB-SERIES 2: PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED WORKS, 1913-1938
Series 10 is comprised of reviews regarding professional publications
by and about Schilder, arranged by date; the voluminous correspondence
about his publications carried on by Bender following his death (she
continued to edit and issue his writings for approximately twenty years
while carrying on full-time professional activities and raising their
three infant children), also arranged by date; and notes Schilder left.
This series also has Schilder's published and unpublished paper retained
by Bender, arranged by title. These are in both handwritten and typed
form and in both English and German. Prominent among them are the manuscripts
of his Goals and Desires of Man and his Psychoanalytic Theory of Psychoses.
There are also a few unidentified pages.
SERIES 11: PERSONAL MATERIALS, 1886-1962. 1 oversized bx. .75 cu. ft.
Arranged chronologically.
Here are the personal photos ranging from 1912-48; personal effects,
including Schilder's birth certificate and death certificate. Series
11 also has general correspondence and a professional paper connected
to Schilder's death in December 1940. The paper, "The Death of
the Leader in Group Psychotherapy" by Schilder's colleague, Pauline
Rosenthal, M.D., discusses the effects of Schilder's death on his group-therapy
patients. There is a folder of personal letters concerning the Schilder
family, including some to Ms. Bender from Adolf Woltmann, the puppeteer
(Box 14). A folder of letters and cables relating to Schilder's death
dates mainly from Dec. 1940 – Jan. 1941, but extends till Nov.
1941. Some of the clippings on Schilder's death mention the feud between
Bender and his first wife. In addition, there is a folder of financial
documents from 1929-40 offering information on Schilder’s divorce
as well as a folder about Schilder's life and several bibliographies
of his writings. Oversize items stored in box 23, an oversized box.
V. JOHN O. BENDER PAPERS
SERIES 12: JOHN O. BENDER PAPERS. 1 document
box. .5 cubic foot. No special arrangement. Contains writings by Bender's father, John O. Bender.
This
series is comprised of Dr. Bender’s father’s papers.
There is some ephemera, an obituary notice, photographs, as well
as a bit of correspondence,
Biographical Note
| Scope and Content Note | Series Descriptions
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